A Quote by Edmund White

Hell is God's Absence.

Edmund White

Quote Topics

Absence God Hell Hell Is

Quote Author

Edmund White
American - Novelist
Born: January 13, 1940

Darkness is the absence of light. Happiness is the absence of pain. Anger is the absence of joy. Jealousy is the absence of confidence. Love is the absence of doubt. Hate is the absence of peace. Fear is the absence of faith. Life is the absence of death.

Jess Bowen

Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laughter.

Mike Yaconelli

First, God does not send people to hell. He simply honors their choice. Hell is the ultimate expression of God's high regard for the dignity of man. He has never forced us to choose Him, even when that means we would choose Hell.

Max Lucado

God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.

Albert Einstein

Hell was not part of the original creation. Hell is God's fall-back position. Hell is something God was forced to make because people chose to rebel against him and turn against what was best for them and the purpose for which they were created.

Lee Strobel

A lot of people say, well how can a loving God send anyone to hell? First of all God doesn't send anyone to hell. If we go to hell, it's by our own choice. But when somebody says to me, how can a loving God allow anyone to go to hell, I'll turn around and say, "Well how can a holy, just, righteous God allow sin into His presence?"

Josh McDowell

But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I believe in hell. Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven. No doubt because hell is a more earth-seeming thing. I can fancy the tortures of the damned but I cannot imagine the disembodied souls hanging in a crystal for all eternity praising God.

Flannery O'Connor

The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved - cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Even if the absence of evidence for a given god were not evidence of its absence, it would still be evidence that the belief in that god is unreasonable. That's the only proposition that any atheist of any kind has to demonstrate in order to win the argument. Because anything beyond that... is just having fun.

Scott Clifton

Through humility, soul-searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. This doctrine is incompatible with the infinite love of God. God is not a judge but a friend and a lover of humanity. God seeks not to condemn but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device. Hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God.

Unknown

Hell is the absence of the people you long for.

Emily St. John Mandel

Evil exists because of the disobedience of Satan. God gave Satan, and the angels, and man free will. Satan used his free will and abused it by not obeying authority. Hell was created by Satan’s disobedience to God, and his purposeful removal from God’s love—which is what hell is. Removing yourself from God’s love. You send yourself to hell. God does not send you there.

Stephen Colbert

Scripture sees hell as self-chosen. . . Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose. Either to be with God forever, worshipping Him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves.

J. I. Packer

...I just want to be free of the fears and anxieties and the superstitions of religion. An 'avenging GOD'? One who created Hell for those who don't believe? I thought we were the perfect and holy children of GOD? How could any limits possibly be put upon us? Hell.. really? I'm sorry, but... no. Wrong. You're wrong. That's an insane GOD and therefore not mine. Because, see, GOD would be very sane, don't you get it?